What's Elizabeth Reading? ...Abbott

So ... you know how I said in my previous post that you would be hearing about Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott soon? Well, since it took me less than a day to read it (Total -- the time lapse was actually a small part of yesterday and a good chunk of the first half of today), you get to hear about it now.

I'm mentioning the speed with which I read the book for two reasons: First, to give you an idea of how long it takes to read, for scheduling purposes, and second, because I'm honestly amazing myself with how quickly I am inhaling stories before the spring semester starts. "Inhaling," because each book is going by so fast. I really did not know I could read this quickly. By my count, I have read nine novels or novellas -- granted, four of those were Narnia books -- in two and a half weeks. I'm not bragging. I'm staring at myself in utter astonishment.

Flatland serves science fiction in its pure form, also referred to as "hard science fiction," though you may say this is more about math than science. However, since a lot of science is just applied math, there is not much difference, to tell the truth. A full half of the book is devoted to describing the plane of existence, its culture, its people, its history, etc., our narrator comes from. That is, it describes Flatland itself. The second half is a story of sorts, but it's actually devoted to describing three other planes of existence that the narrator visits or sees.

By "plane of existence," I mean dimension. The narrator is, literally, a square. He literally lives in a plane of existence. His wife, and all women, actually, is a line segment. His grandsons are hexagons. At some point he visits a dimension that is just a line, where everyone is a line segment within a giant line. He also visits Pointland, which is inhabited by a single point that is not aware anything else exists -- in essence, the land of no dimension. His guide, when he gets one, is a sphere, a being from the third dimension.

It's difficult to explain in a short amount of space, so suffice it to say that if you are interested in understanding, you ought to read the book. It was intriguing. FYI, the author does include pictures so as to aid understanding of the geometric and dimensional concepts.

I have a hard time deciding whether the book is meant to be sexist or feminist. Women in Flatland are volatile and dangerous, simpletons with short memories. This applies to literally every woman. After looking a little bit online, though, I'm erring on the side of it being feminist; that is, the book shows how women were treated then and satirizes it to ridiculous proportions in order to make a point.

One thing I particularly loved was that the book is a marvelous introduction to the idea of a fourth dimension (not time). It makes it seem absolutely plausible that since there is a plane of existence where there is only length and width, and there is a plane of existence where there is length, width, and height, then it is possible for another property to exist, of which we are currently ignorant. The book goes so far as to suggest that God and His angels may live in one such dimension. I find it an intriguing notion.

Overall, I would love to sit down and explain the concepts in the book to you, but I'll refrain from doing so based on the idea that if you really are interested, you'll read the book. Be aware that it isn't fiction in the strictest sense, and my younger brother, who loaned me the book, doesn't even consider it to be science fiction. It's like science ... with a storyline. Excuse me, but isn't that science fiction? The definition of science fiction is kind of falling apart. Just because the story takes place in the future, in space, in the ground, during an apocalypse, etc., does not make it science fiction. The science is essential to good, true science fiction.